Phoebe Snow Is Back, With a New Perspective

With a generation of pop musicians well into their second and third decades of dealing with the hazards of high public visibility, it’s no surprise that images of personal redemption and recovery are rapidly catching up with love stories as sources of inspiration. Survival and renewal seem to have become the buzzwords of the late ‘80s.

Take singer Phoebe Snow, who opens a three-night engagement at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano tonight. This week’s performances come at the close of a fatiguing six-month world tour undertaken to support her first album in eight years.

Snow’s return to the pop-music spotlight after such a lengthy hiatus is testimony to her power to survive as well as to the slowly emerging and long overdue belief in herself as a performer and as a person. It’s been a long and winding road and, as Snow says, “I’ve still got a long way to go.”

The high-profile part of her career began in 1974 with the release of “Poetry Man,” a brilliantly creative effort that was also a commercial success. The sudden good fortune had its dark side, however.

“It was pretty frightening,” Snow, 37, recalled in a telephone conversation recently. Virtually overnight, she was “overwhelmed” by a barrage of lawyers, accountants, managers and producers. Nasty legal hassles prevented the release of a second album until 1976, and Snow’s recording career then began moving in fits and starts as she worked for a series of producers.

In 1975, she gave birth to a daughter, Valerie, who was born with brain damage. Snow has divided her time over the past 14 years between music and motherhood, and there were many times that music had to take second place.

(Snow today maintains that all matters regarding her daughter are private. She said only that “Valerie’s doing fantastically well, and that’s no exaggeration. She’s happy and healthy. She’ll be 14 in December, and she’s absolutely beautiful. I hate being away from her.”)

Snow’s last recording before the current “Something Real,” issued on Elektra/Asylum in April, was 1981’s “Rock Away.” In the interim, her singing was limited to commercials for items such as Louis Rich turkeys and Hallmark cards and to a series of demo tapes she made in a home four-track studio.

“I had no idea what was going to become of those songs at the time,” Snow said, “but it’s a good thing I did them. Practically everything on the new record was demoed in that studio--plus 14 others that weren’t used that may wind up on my next record.”

The hiatus also gave Snow a period in which to pursue some deep introspection. Snow says it was a time in which she began to find herself and, as with most creative artists, her work was very much a part of it.

“When I began to look at my songs, I realized that everything was subjective; I really saw me beating myself up, sometimes. And I don’t believe I do that anymore, thank God.

“I just don’t want to come across as somebody who’s always moaning, ‘Oh, you walked out on me and I want to die.’ That’s not where I’m at, not at all. Not anymore.”

The “jinx,” Snow said, was broken on her new album with “a sort of silly, happy, up-tempo song: ‘Cardiac Arrest.’ I actually wrote it about seven or eight years ago, but it held up. And it proved to me--when I heard the final production--that I can write this kind of song, and I’m going to write similar songs in the future.”

She had some reservations about another piece, “Touch Your Soul,” however: “That’s the kind of song where I get into this whole thing in which I’m talking to a guy, and I’m saying, basically: ‘I saw you cheating on me with somebody else. And even though I’m not interested in you, I might run into you again, sometime. . . .’

“I really was wallowing in a lot of negativity with that one,” she said. “I know a lot of people really like that song, but for me, it reflects a mood and an atmosphere that I don’t want to have anything to do with anymore.”

Snow has spent the last year, she said, working hard to break out of what she sees as a spiral of co-dependent relationships. “I’ve spent this entire year,” she said, “discovering that there is another way to have relationships that’s different from the way I used to have them.

“That’s why, at the moment, I don’t have a relationship--and, by the way, it’s working out great. I’m really happy, I’m feeling centered, and I’m not at all interested in getting involved--at least not until I figure out how to do it constructively.”

That determination to take control also extends to her work. Less than fully content with the album that signaled her return to prominence in the music business, she is determined to avoid the same mistakes in her next recording.

“I was rusty when we made ‘Something Real,’ ” Snow said. “I hadn’t been in the studio for eight years, and I was a little overwhelmed by the whole process of getting acclimated. I think I just got swept up in the whole movement of the thing, and even though I had a certain degree of artistic involvement and control, it probably wasn’t enough.

“I guarantee you that won’t happen again,” she said firmly, “because the responsibility for my career is in my own hands. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that no matter where you work or what you do--no matter what industry or what job--if you have a very positive and firm self-image, you’ll make it. And that’s what I’m working on, right here and right now.”

Phoebe Snow will perform at 8 p.m. tonight through Thursday at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. Tickets: $27.50. Information: (714) 496-8930.